English in Arab and Other Countries

I asked how widespread is the knowledge of English in Arab countries. Jaqui White, who spent years in Saudi Arabia with the husband Paul, writes: Paul taught orthopaedic surgery to the medical students at the King Saud University in Abha, Saudi Arabia in the early 1990's.  The entire medical school was taught in English.  All of his students spoke, read, and wrote fluent English, so obviously they had been studying that language for many years.  Due to medical terminology, I believe that this custom is widespread all over the world. It was extremely common for the families of influence to send their sons to the United States and England for university, with entire families spending months during the holidays in those two countries.  All members of the royal family speak fluent English.   RH: This is a tricky question. In England in the old days, well educated people knew French, but it was still a minority of the population. Has the oil industry led to the widespread knowledge of English in Arab oil-producing areas? As for  medicine, I will ask Professor Sidney Raffel of Stanford Medical School, since he knows medical schools in several countries.  There are a number of WAISer physicians, including Phyllis Gardner and Herb Abrams.  They may have some comment.  My guess is that English is not the lingua franca of law. WAIS chairman Maurice Harari, Secretary General Emeritus of the International Association of University Presidents, has an unparalleled knowledge of the universities of the world. I assume English is the language of the association.

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